To some, including myself, baseball is the greatest sport that has ever been played. It is a game played by two opposing teams made of multiple players, but only nine players per team play at the same time. To be part of one of the thirty teams that get to play professional baseball, a player has to play the game extremely well.When a player plays the game better than most have played he gets rewarded, usually with lots of money in a big contract. Then there are those rare players, the 244 elite players of the game that have already been inducted into the Hall of Fame. Being inducted in the Hall of Fame is the utmost of baseball fame. The players listed are remembered forever. This brings me to my argument. Pete Rose should be allowed induction into the Hall of Fame.
Now, most of the baseball critics and brass do not want Pete Rose inducted. They claim that his illegal betting on baseball games should keep him out of the Hall of Fame. Almost all of the “highly questionable” evidence that Commissioner Bart Giamatti held was derived from former friends and associates of Rose. “Up to $30,000 per day”, so some of Roses’ “close” friends say. These former friends of Rose are Tommy Gioiosa, Donald Stenger, Mike Fry, and Paul Janszen. This evidence is what prompted the banishment from baseball of Pete Rose, which he signed. The evidence was enough for the Commissioner. In 1989, baseball’s Commissioner Bart Giammati suspended Pete Rose from association with professional baseball for life for gambling (Reston 1997). Rose also spent five months in a minimum-security prison for tax evasion in 1990. He did not report cash money he accepted for signing baseballs and photographs at baseball card shows (Reston 1997). It is still to this day not proven that Rose ‘did’ bet on the baseball team that he was managing. Rose himself still holds true to his statement that he never bet on the game of baseball. Evidence is minimal and it has been over ten years, yet he is still ineligible to be voted into the Hall of Fame. If it was left up to his statistics, he should have been inducted years ago. There are a handful of the 244 elites that are in the Hall of Fame that did far worse things than gamble on the game of baseball or evade paying their taxes. For instance, the beloved Ty Cobb was a horrible racist and once admitted killing a man. One day while walking in Detroit, he stepped in freshly poured asphalt. Then a construction worker, named Fred Collins, who just happened to be black, yelled at him. Cobb responded by slapping Collins to the ground. Cobb was found guilty by the courts, and received a suspended sentence. Collins filed a civil suit, but settled out of court for $75. Ty Cobb had to deal with the law in one form or another many different times for striking black men (www.totalbaseball.com). The powers that run the baseball organization seem to turn their eyes, quite conveniently, away from any number of wife-beaters, and drug addict’s everyday. They let known, proven criminals continue to play the game, but not Rose. There is no ‘absolute proof’ that Pete Rose did bet on baseball. So, why is it that a baseball player with so many of the greatest statistics is left out of the Hall of Fame? Pete Rose should be allowed induction into the Hall of Fame.
Many of the players that have made it to the highest level of the game, being inducted into the Hall of Fame, do not have even one tenth of the statistics that Pete Rose has (Gilbert 1994). Rose has more career hits than anyone who has ever played the game, 4,256 to be exact. Rose also played in 3,562 games (a major league record), was the 1963 Rookie of the Year, and in 1973 was the National Leagues Most Valuable Player. He holds the all-time league record for most at bats (14,053), the record for the most singles (3,315), and the record for most doubles (746). He also holds the all-time league record for most total career runs at 2,165. As you can see, Pete Rose more than fulfils the standards to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Pete Rose has also done something that no other player has had the ability or time to do. He has played over 500 games at each of five different positions (Sokolove 1992). His main stay appears to be first base (939 games), but when compared with the other positions played, it appears that he was just a great all around baseball player. He played 628 games at second base, 634 at third, 671 in left field, and 595 in right field. These are astronomical numbers compared to others that have played the game over time. Pete Rose is in a class all by himself.
Pete Rose also played professional baseball for more consecutive years than anyone else ever has. He played for a whopping 24 straight years, which is another all-time league record. These 24 years outdid even the great Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, and Rod Carew. Rose played major roles on the three championship years that he had. Rose and his teammates earned three World Series championships, whereas Ernie Banks, a member of the Hall of Fame, was never able to win one.
It may not be time to pardon Rose for his gambling or tax evasion. But, when baseball has a person that gave his heart and played like a true champion as Pete Rose did, how can we not induct him? It may not be time for the life long ban of Pete Rose and baseball to be lifted, but it sure is time for Pete Rose to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
8 replies on “Rose Deserves a Call from the Hall”
If If guys like Strawberry (drugs, etc.) should be allowed to play baseball and guys like Bonds (OBVIOUS cheater) should be allowed to stay in the game, Rose should get into the Hall.
You can’t tell me that guys with 700+ homeruns (Bonds) that obviously cheated to get there should belong in the Hall, and Rose, the all-time leader in hits (who DIDN’T cheat) should not.
Someone with the all-time lead in career hits, a feat that may never be passed by a player, should be in the Hall. I don’t care what he did.
Again, if that wasteland of a guy Barry Bonds can stay in the game and have his head grow to the size of a picnic ham, Rose (or any other “outsider”) should get the right treatment – a call to the Hall.
Good article.
MY PRISON WITHOUT BARS by Pete Rose with Rick Hill “Rule 21,” which states: “Any player, umpire, or club or league official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible.”
“In all honesty, I no longer recognized the difference between one sport and another,” Rose says in his book. “I just looked down at the games and thought, `I’ll take a dime on the Lakers, a dime on the Sixers, a dime on the Buckeyes, and a dime on the Reds.’ I didn’t even consider the consequences.”
“Mr. Selig looked me in the eye and said, ‘I want to know one thing. Did you bet on baseball?’ I looked him in the eye. “Sir, my daddy taught me two things in life — how to play baseball and how to take responsibility for my actions. . . Yes, sir, I did bet on baseball . . . But I never bet against my own team and I never made any bets from the clubhouse'”
“In 1921, Shoeless Joe Jackson was banned from baseball due to his alleged involvement in the Black Sox scandal of 1919. But for nearly 85 years, fans have argued as to whether or not the White Sox legend truly deserves such a stiff penalty, especially when he was acquitted by a judge of any wrong doing.” (excerpt taken from shoelessjoejackson.com)
Rose is a Hall of Famer! “Mr. Bonds, did you take any form of performance enhancing drug?”
“Um, maybe. Sort of. Unknowingly? It was clear. No it was cream. I thought it was lotion for dry skin!”
My point is, at least Rose came out and told the truth, and I think betting on baseball (including never on/against his own team or from the clubhouse!!) is a far lesser crime than enhancing one’s own play by taking steroids or supplements.
Rose = HOF
Bonds = HOF for pre-1999
McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro = NO HOF
What part of… “a dime on the Reds” constitutes that Rose didn’t bet on his own team? My problem with this article was that the book was never mentioned at all, as if it was never written. Talk about ignoring the elephant.
My first post on this site; I’m sorry it’s long It should be duly noted that Mr. Rose has admitted to betting on his own team, but has never admitted to (nor has any evidence been presented to suggest that he had been) betting against his own team.
The key difference here is that it’s very easy to see how betting against a team that you were either managing or playing for would compromise the integrity of the game, given the conflict of interest that would immediately arise. I firmly believe that if Major League Baseball were to obtain evidence that Mr. Rose in fact bet against his own team, and presumably threw games in the process, that he should unquestionably be banned for life and that there should be no further discussion of the matter.
Meanwhile, a manager who was managing to win the game, having laid a wager that his team would win, would likely still manage with the intent of winning the game. If the intent of the manager before the bet is to win the game, and his intent after the bet is completely unchanged, it seems to me that the integrity of the game is largely uncompromised. It is akin to betting your friend Joe five dollars that you could beat your friend Steve in a footrace. Now, if you were to bet Joe that Steve would beat you, the integrity of the footrace would obviously be less than pristine.
Now, one could make the argument that a manager who had bet in favor of his own team might perhaps try just a little bit harder to win that game at the expense of the future, perhaps overusing a star pitcher or playing a big bat who needed a day off. One could also see the obvious issues with betting for your team against a point-spread, which could result in horrible managerial decisions in search of unnecessary “insurance runs”. But by and large I rather doubt that Mr. Rose had terrifically bad intentions when he made these bets. He played all out to win every single game he played in, and likely managed the same way regardless of whether or not he had money laying on the game.
All of that said, I agree with you that the recently published book should have been mentioned, and probably mentioned heavily, given that it could have helped defend the article’s thesis. Similarly, I would criticize the extensive use of statistics in the article to prove the point. No one, and I mean no one, would argue that Mr. Rose’s statistical accomplishments wouldn’t immediately qualify him as a first-ballot Hall of Famer. The question at hand is whether the acts that he committed should disqualify him from Hall consideration. Indeed, had Ray Schalk (notably the Hall of Fame position player with the lowest career batting average) done the same things as Mr. Rose did, I should hope that we would not be immediately disqualifying him on the basis of the idea that he was a “marginal” Hall of Famer anyway.
Bottom line is, I think that Mr. Rose should be admitted into the Hall of Fame and reinstated into Major League Baseball. I personally believe that acquitting him of his sins, for which he has publically apologized and done due penance, will do a great deal to wash the stains he has left off of the game. Obviously Bud Selig should not be looking to encourage wagering on baseball games involving one’s own team, and the rule should continue to be in place to ensure that it does not happen again, but in this case I believe that an executive pardon is appropriate.
well done First, welcome to the site. Second, you make a compelling argument that Rose’s gambling on his team probably didn’t make a difference in the outcome of the games. Still, the cardinal sin in baseball is to not gamble on baseball. There are signs in every clubhouse that reminds players of this. The bottom line is that Rose was guilty and therefore does not belong in the hall of fame. He broke THE rule.
Meanwhile, Barry shouldn’t make the HOF because he’s a cheater. But that’s another story.
more Bonds Yes more Bonds apologies here…you can call him a cheater and provide excerpts out of the rulebook that state steroids are illegal, but how illegal is something if it is not policed for? Baseball let the steroid problem run rampant by not testing for it no matter what the rule book says. You can’t go back and punish one person for cheating when a plethora of other players were cheating as well throwing the entire game out of whack. Bonds past was made public only because he is on top and everyone wants to knock down the king of the hill. Yes you can call Bonds a cheater, immoral and a slug of a human being, but don’t keep him out of the HOF based on written testimony after the fact.
One comment on past heros; How different would we view these guys if they had to deal with the media of today while making the money of today’s athletes? Heros aren’t sports athletes, but parents, teachers, service men and the good people around the world who are never recognized. Kids need to be taught about TRUE role models.
Bill Romonowski used to say 1 step ahead of drug testing by always getting the substance that wasn’t yet illegal. Technically, he didn’t even violate drug policy. Did he cheat?
Just because it isn’t policed doesn’t mean it’s not cheating. Bonds gained an advantage through illegal susbstances. If that’s not cheating, I don’t know what is.